1.
Der heimliche Aufmarsch (4:24)
Musik: Hanns Eisler
Text: Erich Weinert/Ernst Busch
Verlag: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Vocals: Augst
2.
The Phoenix and the Turtle (1:55)
Musik: Thomas Dézsy
Text: William Shakespeare
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Editing: Augst
Vocals: Augst
Piano: Dézsy
3.
Vom Sprengen des Gartens (4:43)
Musik: Hanns Eisler
Text: Bertolt Brecht
Verlag: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Arrangement, sound: Korn
Spoken words: by Frantz Fanon (The Wrechtched Of The Earth, 1961)
Vocals and spoken words: Maxeiner
4.
Spartakuslied (4:37)
Musik: Oliver Augst/Marcel Daemgen/Thomas Dézsy/Christoph Korn
Text: DP
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Vocals: Augst
Korg MS10-synthesizer/electronics: Daemgen
Effects-pad/synthesizer: Dézsy
Melodica/guitar/2nd vocals: Korn
5.
Warum wir eine revolutionäre Partei brauchen (3:28)
Musik: Oliver Augst/Marcel Daemgen/Christoph Korn
Text: Tony Cliff
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Spoken words: Augst
Korg MS10-synthesizer/electronics: Daemgen
Guitar/harp: Korn
6.
Auf auf zum Kampf (3:10)
Musik: Oliver Augst/Marcel Daemgen/Thomas Dézsy/Christoph Korn
Text: August Bebel
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Vocals: Augst
Korg MS10-synthesizer/electronics/samples: Daemgen
Effects-Pad/Synthesizer: Dézsy
Guitar/2nd vocals: Korn
7.
Als ich dich gebar (2:49)
Musik: Hanns Eisler
Text: Bertolt Brecht
Verlag: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst/Daemgen
Vocals: Augst
Synthesizer/electronics/samples: Daemgen
Guitar: Korn
8.
An den kleinen Radioapparat (4:44)
Musik: Hanns Eisler
Text: Bertolt Brecht
Verlag: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Arrangement, sound: Christoph Korn
Spoken words by Frantz Fanon (The Wrechtched Of The Earth, 1961)
Vocals and spoken words: Maxeiner
9.
Die Internationale (4:07)
Musik: Chrétien Degeyter
Text: Eugène Pottier; Emil Luckhardt
Arrangement, sound: Daemgen
String arrangement: Daemgen/Dézsy
Vocals: Augst
2nd vocals: Daemgen/Maxeiner/Simon Hoehl
10.
Auferstanden aus Ruinen (4:23)
Musik: Hanns Eisler
Text: Johannes R. Becher
Verlag: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Vocals/keyboard: Augst
Korg MS10-synthesizer/electronics: Daemgen
Electronics/guitar/harp: Korn
11.
Der kleine Trompeter (1:15)
Music: OliverAugst, Christoph Korn
Text: DP
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Melody and Text: soldiers song of unknown origin
Vocals: Augst, Guitar: Korn
12.
Unsterbliche Opfer (4:31)
Musik: N.N. Ikonnikow; Marcel Daemgen
Text: Hermann Scherchen (1918)
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement, sound: Daemgen
Melody: funeral hymn after N. N. Ikonnikow
Vocals: Augst
Korg MS10-Synthesizer/electronics/samples: Daemgen
2nd vocals: Maxeiner
13.
Trotz Alledem (1:53)
Music: Thomas Dézsy
Text: Robert Burns
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Vocals: Augst
2nd vocals, piano: Dézsy
14.
Hälfte des Lebens (5:18)
Musik: Christoph Korn
Text: Friedrich Hölderlin
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement, sound: Christoph Korn
Spoken words by Frantz Fanon (The Wrechtched Of The Earth, 1961)
Vocals and spoken words: Maxeiner
15.
Die schlesischen Weber (0:46)
Musik: Thomas Dézsy
Text: Heinrich Heine
Verlag: GEMA/copyright control
Arrangement/sound edit: Augst
Vocals: Augst
Piano: Dézsy
Produced by Augst/Daemgen/Korn
in co-production with DeutschlandRadio 2004
Sound-Mastering: Marcel Daemgen
Sound engineer, Deutschlandfunk: Hans-Martin Renz
Co-producer, Deutschlandfunk: Frank Kämpfer
Live recording sessions took place at the Sendesaal, Deutschlandfunk Cologne, October 2002, all other recordings and sound editing were done in the studios of Augst/Daemgen/Korn
Graphic Design:
MARX remixed
In a public sphere that grasps for the improper out a need for distraction, the attention for anachronisms grows. Even in the following CD, this appears to be the case. With a few beats and displaced electronic sounds, "On, On to Battle” and the "Spartacus Song” and the other paltry marches and melodies of the past are evidently not without their interest. Some pieces almost seem danceable and advance to would-be hits despite their dated choice of words; they barricade themselves in such a way, are disposed of and forgotten offhand.
In order to clear up any misunderstandings, Olive Augst, Marcel Daemgen and Christoph Korn are not voyeurs. Their work aims at neither persiflage nor another flashy form of entertainment. The trio from Frankfurt is more interested in musical archaeology. That which is buried and repressed is brought to the surface, worn-down vestments are bared, placed in a new, current acoustic context and interrogated according to the unredeemed.
That the song and intellectual goods of the German labor movement, of all things, falls in the sights of this excavation is not much of a surprise after the Eisler Program and the Folk Song Project by the Frankfurt group. It cannot be seen as illegitimate – one and a half decades after the political collapse of the East Block – to dig around in the cultural heritage of the failed socialistic Germany. It only requires a bit of courage to do it without malice, this being free of expectant clichés. And to be open while searching for the traces of everything that remained of the ideas of freedom from the proletariat time, after decades of perverted state reality in the century of ideologies and wars.
Augst, Daemgen and Korn and their two guests researched extensively for this project and ultimately chose fifteen pieces and texts for their purposes, which they revived artistically in their own way. Their interpretation of the problematic repertoire comes about far from historical performance techniques. Former celebrating occurs only as a citation in the best case, the romantic emphasis is missing (mostly), and in its place appears mourning as gesture and collage and cut as technique.
Some lines of text fall through the grid, their meaning condensed, refrain and strophes are sometimes ripped from different originals and are clamped together in the remix. The megaphone, formerly an instrument of socialist agitation, delivers here a moment of defamiliarization. Mottoes of socialistic mass culture sound distorted, consciously overloaded, only understandable in fragments, as if their difficult tradition were composed like a parable. As if the historically proven persecution of radical social ideas were documented, as were the perverting of them into a state ideology and their failure and falling silent in the present interpretation. In the fluttering of the disturbing sounds, in the medial rustling, what becomes unrecognizable, even forgetting itself, becomes a topic and an independent artistic form.
There are reasons that the lived past in East Germany is demonized, extinguished and may only return medially in nostalgic forms. MARX/Lieder [Songs] – as per the contract of the co-partner, Germany Radio – attempt to work against such a new kind of taboo. Comparable with Sigmund Freud’s work of mourning, critical observation and contention take place subjectively on this Concept-CD, happenstance, without a claim to order and completion. In addition to the "highlights” of socialistic songs from the proletarian as well as state-socialist time, other finds on the record also wash ashore. A verse of Shakespeare, Hölderlin, Brecht and Frantz Fanon, about the funeral march and the art song accompanied solo. They announce the damaged as well as hopeful individuals and bring MARX back home under the horizon of his own time.
FRANK KÄMPFER, July 2004
Translation: Bruce Carnevale
